Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/362

 The burden on his mind was growing intolerably heavy. Every moment it cried out to him that he must share it with another, or be crushed beneath its weight. He would have gone down to see the Pastor, but that to do so he must cross the Coupée. He had not the courage actually to pass the spot from which his thoughts were never long absent. And while his mind tossed distressfully this way and that, Monsieur Chauchat chanced to come up to see him.

The sight of a real human face, the sound of a real human voice, unlocked his heart, set his tongue going. In spite of the old man's many attempted interruptions, he poured out the whole story; all the injuries, real or fancied, he had received at Shergold's hands, his own hatred for him, the man's fate, his own impotent repentance. "And now," he said, simply, when he had concluded, "I wish to give myself up. Tell me what I am to do."

Chauchat looked at him with inﬁnite pity, and showed neither horror not surprise. Le Mesurier was even conscious of a certain movement of indignation within his own bosom, that any one should hear of the murder of a fellow-creature so composedly.

"You must give up this kind of life," said the Pastor gently. "It is terribly bad for you. You must have society, you must travel."

Le Mesurier was amazed at such irrelevance. He looked at Chauchat curiously. He thought him aged, whiter, feebler than ever before. He wondered whether he still had all his faculties. And he answered impatiently, "But what has that to do with what I have been telling you?"

"You must take care," said the old man; "solitude brings delusions, hallucinations; to indulge in them is to shake the mind's stability. You must come back into the world. You must mix with other men."

He